Well if you are anything like me as the time for celebrating your fantasy football championships and grumbling over how close you came in other leagues comes to an end you look at the 8 month span before the next football season and realize there is only one thing to be happy about. It’s time for some Fantasy Baseball. I’m sure there are plenty of your hard core players that consider this a year round thing and I have nothing against that but for the majority in the fantasy field we know this is more of a sport to sport game.

As my first article about baseball I would like to do as I always do at start picking my things I am all in on and things I’m staying away from. Since my player rankings are nothing I am committed on quite yet with spring training still about two months away there is only one thing that really holds strong in my mind this year and I am ALL IN about it, Auction leagues.

By now almost everyone that reads this knows what an auction league is vs the typical serpentine style player picking draft by round. I am fine with the fact the draft by rounds is the most common and probably should be for a long time. Auction style is not for beginners. Really when you are thinking about going Auction or Draft format you need to think of what type of players are in the league. The people that I think fit the Auction style and shouldn’t go Round draft fit at least 3 of the 5 following criteria:

1. If you’re the type of player that would be reading an article like this on a site other then MLB or ESPN.com: Just going outside of the typical media mainstreams show you are looking to take that next step into your fantasy baseball and some of the advice you find in places like this will be the difference from winning or losing in a league

2. If you start your baseball research for the upcoming season in or before January: Spring training doesn’t even start until the very end of February and then you still have over another full month before the start of the regular season. Keeping track of off season moves and team restructurings can give you a leg up but lets not kid ourselves, it is more about passion then an actual advantage.

3. Your team never makes less then 100 waiver moves in a season: Some of the things that separates the men from the boys is taking that step from just doing the football season is adjusting the the everyday games and the everyday moves. In football making 100 moves can be a bit for the ridiculous but in fantasy baseball I consider it a baseline.

4. You never pay for saves: If there is one lesson it seems people always talk about but then again every year people seem to keep doing it and have pitchers like Neftali Feliz and Matt Capps make them regret it. None of the top five RP drafted last year finished in the top five RP for the year and only one of them even finished in the Top 10 (Mr. Rivera)

5. You have ever drafted someone who you didn’t like just because 2 rounds after they were supposed to go you found them to be a “Good Value”: So many times people go into a draft very against a player, someone like Grady Sizemore who you know is not going to be good but suddenly after 50 or 60 players are off the board you start thinking…Maybe he will get back into his old form regardless of his injury risk and falling average over the last 4 years. Never Again Grady…

Really most of these just check your level of commitment to the game because in the end the only difference between a successful auction and a horrible one is preparation. With a lot of sites already setting out rankings a team can auto draft in a round based draft and still win with good management. In an auction league it keeps more of the human element in the game and really helps define the skill level of the players. Another benefit is there is no real draft order so your chance at the players you love and are ALL IN on like me, you can go for them and you won’t feel obligated to draft Pujols if you end up with the #1 overall pick in a round based league.

I hope this helps spark the auction wild fire in more fantasy baseball owners. If you have questions or are searching for fantasy baseball advice you can find me on twitter @FantasyFanalyst.